


Words for Remembering, Words to Forget

by dweebulous



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Lie Low At Lupin's, M/M, Marauders
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-23
Updated: 2014-06-23
Packaged: 2018-02-05 20:23:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,879
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1831075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dweebulous/pseuds/dweebulous
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Sirius is on the run, he spends nine days healing at Remus’s. In their own ways, both men struggle to come to terms with the past. To remember—and to forget.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Words for Remembering, Words to Forget

The knock on the back door comes soft, almost tentative. Remus wouldn’t have even heard it if he hadn't been sitting in silence, waiting. He's at the door by the third quiet tap, and he doesn't check the peephole like he's supposed to, like he trained his Defense Against the Dark Arts students just last semester. His heart beats too hard in his throat to do anything but unlatch and open the door and there, under the spill of yellow light from the lamp in the alley, stands Sirius Black. 

Dirty, tired, skinny Sirius with such a sharp look of fear on his face that Remus peers wildly behind him into the backyard: surely there must be some follower, a Ministry official or a Death Eater (both equally dangerous, now). But nobody is there, and he realizes with a sick lurch of his stomach that Sirius is not afraid of being pursued. He is afraid of coming inside.

"Come in," he says, straining to keep his voice steady and gentle. Sirius steps in, trying to his shaking hands in the folds of his tattered robe as Remus locks the door again. 

All evening, he'd sat with all the lights turned out except for the one above the sink in the kitchen. He'd brewed tea that sat untouched by his elbow as he hunched over the table, staring at the wood grain until all the tea leaves sunk soggy to the bottom of the mug. He'd rented the first floor of this miserable row house on the last of his teacher's wages, and he'd waited for five weeks now for Sirius to show up wanting refuge. 

It seemed he was always waiting. For bad news, for summons, for moons and knocks on the door. The whole evening, the whole week, really for the last twelve years, he'd been waiting for the same thing. He'd been waiting for Sirius to come back. 

“I can… put the kettle on? I have ham and bread for sandwiches, or…” He does not know what best to offer Sirius, who has come here to recover before going on the run once more. 

Sirius shakes his head once, twice. “No—I mean, yes, but not right now…” He clears his throat; his voice is gravelly with misuse. “I’d like to clean up first, if that’s alright.” 

Remus shows him to the bathroom, then paces the living room. What had he expected? That they would fall into each other’s arms? That they would come back together and become young men again? 

Just this morning, he'd stood in front of the bathroom mirror worrying his hair still wet from the shower, shot through with so much silver. He'd never been one for mirrors, and on this rare inspection he noticed the lines that deepened under his eyes and at the corners of his mouth. He tried to remember what it felt like to be young. 

He steps to the side of the bathroom door, which Sirius has left cracked open. Sirius stands shirtless with his hands clutching either side of the sink basin so that the muscles in his wiry arms stand out. He is so thin that his chest looks to be caving in. There are sores where the collar of his dirty prison shirt rubbed his neck raw for weeks. 

But the most marked change, the one Remus notices immediately, is the series of crude black runes tattooed across his collarbone and in a line down his spine. He pushes the door open, reaches out to touch one at the nape of the man's neck—but his fingers hesitate and hover. He wants to ask how he can help, he wants to ask how he can heal. "What do these mean?" he asks instead. 

"Old magic," Sirius says. "For remembering." 

Remus takes a step back, holds his breath. He does not ask what Sirius has inked to his skin, because he doesn’t want to consider all the things he has forgotten. 

He does not consider it then, as he leaves to brew tea and make two sandwiches, as he shuffles to change the sheets on the bed and insist—with a rising lump in his throat—that he will sleep on the couch (had he actually thought they would share the bed? It seemed impossible now in the strained silence of the apartment). Only after the lights are out and he is laying in the living room, straining to hear if Sirius is moving, breathing in the bedroom, does Remus think of the things he has forgotten over the years. Things he packed away, things that were too heavy to carry. He inhales and exhales the silence of the flat, letting all the quiet expand inside him, as he tries not to remember the things that hurt the most.  
\--

Sirius wakes alone in a bed he doesn’t know, and he keeps his eyes shut because he can smell Remus on the pillowcases. Last night was the moon; tomorrow he will leave. He’s overstayed already. It’s dangerous for both of them. He’d planned a week of recovery and now it’s been nine days—all full of strained silences and awkward meals. He’s slept a lot. Since the first night, they have not touched. Remus sleeps on the couch. Sirius is grateful. Still his hands shake, his thoughts blur and crackle. He does not remember how to be around people, even Remus, especially Remus.  


He twists to hunch over on the edge of the bed, trying to calm his heart. What wakes him these days are dreams of dark figures, the whites of eyes. The moon is still out, casting a pale glow through the crack in the curtains. He thinks of Remus with a pang. What does the man dream of?  


They used to talk of such things when they were schoolboys. They used to share pillows and stay up all night whispering, until the sun rose and Sirius crept back to his own bed. They used to catch each other’s tired eyes in morning potions and share smiles born of shared dreams and sleepless nights.  


He traces a hand over the runes tattooed on his collar and feels a stirring of something far-off, like the glimmer of silver fish turning far under a pond’s still surface. 26 runes for remembering, 26 things that cannot be taken away from him.  
There is magic they never teach in schools. Old magic that needs neither container nor vessel, that crackles free in the air like electricity during a storm. There are some spells you can only learn in dark, forgotten places where they send those who have learned too much. He presses his fingers to the mark above his left collarbone and summons an image of James laughing—doubled over, roaring, glasses askew. Just an instant, distant now, like a photograph he once saw long ago. It is not a true memory any more; what it is nobody can take from him.  


He presses his fingers down the row in turn—Lily in her wedding dress; a gang of mismatched animals running in a nighttime forest; inked lines and mapped corridors; Remus in a dark passage with a lit wand, turning to beckon, to laugh over his shoulder.  


He cannot consider the countless things taken form him over twelve years. He focuses, now, on what he has saved.  


He closes his eyes for a moment, just a moment, but when the morning sun arrives and the front door creaks open he isn’t sure if it’s been minutes or hours. The sound of shuffling, boots being kicked off, a stumble and a quiet groan.  


Sirius rises as if Remus has called his name. The other man sits on the couch, head low, cloak still over his shoulders.  


“Remus?” He says, then softer, “Moony.”  


looks up blearily and tries to smile, and for just an instant Sirius feels a transparency in his body, a hollowness to his bones. Their time has come and gone; two ghosts alone in a room.  


“What can I do?” he asks, but Remus shakes his head.  


“I’ve been taking care of myself for a long time.”  


“You shouldn’t have to,” he says softly. Remus accedes.  


At Remus’s instructions, he gets a ceramic basin from under the sink, a vial of dittany form the bathroom cupboard. When he gets back, Remus has poured a liberal amount of Firewhiskey into two glass tumblers. “For the pain,” he says as he downs his glass in one go.  
He sits next to Remus on the couch as the man shrugs off his cloak and unbuttons his shirt, wincing. Even in the dim living room, Sirius can see the edges of an angry bruise blooming across Remus’s chest. Fresh scratches over old scars, some deep and still bleeding. Sirius dips the rag in warm water and rubs it over a cut, smearing red. Remus stays silent but still.  


In the old days, Sirius had been there the morning after every moon, until he hadn’t. He couldn’t remember, now, why he’d stopped. If there had been a fight or if things had just inevitably stretched thin. There is so much he can’t remember. He shakes his head as he rings the rag out into the basin.  
Remus clears his throat. “Thank you.”  


“Of course,” he says. They move so stiff now, these days they’re reunited. Wasn’t it supposed to be easy? No more betrayals or secrets. Wasn’t he supposed to feel joy? More things he cannot remember.  


“I just,” Remus begins, then pauses. “It’s been a long time, since anyone…”  
Sirius’s throat constricts at the thought of twelve years’ moons. Suddenly, he wants to apologize. For his decades-old mistrust, for his secrets, for his leaving—in the past, and in the future. Tomorrow, he will go. He does not know for how long.  


Sirius takes a drink of his whiskey, then another. He has so much he wants to put into words, and no way to do it. So instead, he begins to explain the runes across his collar and down his back—haltingly, awkwardly. James on the Quidditch pitch, the weight of baby Harry in his arms. Of the 26 tattoos, 10 are for Remus. Sleeping with legs tangled in sheets, cups of coffee shared, the constellation of freckles on Remus’s left shoulder. By now, most of the whiskey is gone. Remus’s wounds are clean. He stands and takes Sirius by the hand, leads him to the bedroom still dark with the curtains pulled. They do not kiss or even touch. Remus lays facing the wall and Sirius lays behind him, his heart beating too fast.  


He reaches out a finger to brush against the taut skin of Remus’s shoulder blades, over a lifetime of scar tissue. He traces silent shapes as he thinks of tomorrow morning, when he will leave and Remus will be alone. He wants to make some promise that he will return, but these are not days for promises. Instead, he shapes a silent wish on Remus’s skin again and again, a way of making things easier, the inverse of the runes on his own skin. They breathe in and out together, and with every exhale, he wills the old magic to take hold: _forget, forget, forget._


End file.
